


The Indifference of Stars

by qwanderer



Series: A Home Dearly Fought For (VPRP-MFERP Stories) [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A quiet conversation, Autistic Ina Leifsdottir, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26660500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Relationships: Ina Leifsdottir & Ryan Kinkade
Series: A Home Dearly Fought For (VPRP-MFERP Stories) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1334101
Kudos: 5





	The Indifference of Stars

One clear, chilly night, Kinkade is stargazing on the dormitory roof, and Leifsdottir decides to bring him a mug of tea.

Ina has been doing her best to integrate herself into the team, not simply as a pilot, but - and this is proving considerably more difficult - as a friend.

Griff is a given by now, even when he’s being especially bullheaded. She has faith in him, and she has faith in herself with regards to him.

Rizavi is a challenge, but if friendship with Rizavi was a game in which one leveled up, it would be one which gave lots of large friendly hints about what to do if one got stuck. Ina thinks there must have been some kind of hardware glitch at the beginning, to extend the metaphor. Nothing the matter with Riz’s software, or hers, but an interface problem that could be resolved by plugging in the right adapter. They’re on the right track now, Ina is fairly certain.

Which is, to be honest, very similar to the way she became friends with Griff, although she’d blown a fuse or two before  _ that _ relationship had gotten past the troubleshooting phase. 

Kinkade is not a game. He is not an algorithm or code to be interfaced with. He is something more organic. She had very little luck treating him by way of the algorithms she’d developed for speaking to typical people, schoolmates and military personnel alike.

No, she thinks she will have more luck going back to things she knew before school and the Garrison, with Kinkade.

She remembers people sitting with her, mirroring her and allowing her to understand that they wanted to be with her on her terms, the way she was. Using the same strategy with Rizavi had gone spectacularly badly, but the concept is sound in the abstract.

She remembers befriending a farm cat that had been attacked and had become afraid of the people and the big working dogs on the farm. Nervous cats need to be treated patiently, with quiet and stillness and a lack of eye contact. 

Ina is good at no eye contact. 

She sets the tea at his side without touching him or looking at him, and then she sits down a couple of paces away from him and turns her own eyes to the sky. It is particularly beautiful.

Kinkade thanks her, and wraps his hands around the mug, but doesn’t drink at first.

After a few silent minutes, he asks, “What do you see out there?”

“Gravitational wells,” she answers honestly, without trying to make it into typical small talk. “Varied atmospheres. Intriguing flying conditions.”

“You’re a pilot through and through, huh?” he says. She can’t read the emotions in his voice, but can tell that they are there.

“You could put it that way,” she tells him.

He’s silent again, for shorter this time. “I feel like I should know what I wanna be,” he says. “How can you be so confident about all this? You’re as young as I am.”

Ina takes the time to consider her answer carefully before she opens her mouth.

“I have had to do a lot of deciding,” she says at last. “And it is difficult. I have had to accept who I am and that there are limits to what I can do with that. There are things that are impossible for me. Some people might think that being a pilot is one of them. I have been driven to prove them wrong.”

He makes a noncommittal noise.

She looks at the stars and thinks about all the reasons why she loves them. That would probably not be useful to Kinkade. He clearly loves them as much as she does, but probably for very different reasons.

“Being told you can be anything you want to be is freeing for many people, I have been told. I don’t have any idea what that would be like. For me, knowing my limitations is freeing. I could never make a film. Being engaging as a narrator and interviewer is not one of my strengths, nor is understanding what would be of interest to a viewer. I am free to focus on being a pilot because it is one of a very small number of things that both spark my interest and lie within my limits.”

Kinkade turns to look at her then, for just a moment. “You’re not as limited as you think you are. You could do it if you wanted to.”

She doesn’t know how to react to that. She knows it’s meant to be flattering, but it makes her feel suddenly as if she has become the spooked and cornered cat.

He must be learning to read her a little better, because he says, “Woah, hey. I just say something that offended you?”

“I draw my limits. I draw my limits there. I will only accept limits which I have drawn.” She looks at him out of the corner of her eyes, and tries to moderate herself into something that doesn’t sound as stark as she probably just came across. “That may be another way of saying, I don’t want to.”

He looks at her for a few moments, then he takes a sip of the tea, as if trying to distract himself with it. “That’s an interesting way of looking at things,” he says. “My moms always told me not to limit myself. Not ever. And maybe that does… kinda… actually hold me back sometimes.” He laughs, just a little. “I’d say, that doesn’t make sense, does it? But it’s kinda what you just said, so.”

“People are complicated,” she pronounces. “Contradictory.”

“That we are,” he agrees.

So instead of looking at each other, they look at the stars.

The stars don’t care if they get confused, or misstep, or fail to understand themselves or each other. Their very indifference is comforting, sometimes.


End file.
